ONE. A Favor, a Promise, a Reunion.

“Look, I don’t want you to panic or anything, but I might need you to kill me, if that’s okay with you.”

“…what the fuck are you talking about, Sean?”

Victor’s words came out flabbergasted as he stared at me from across the room, wide eyed with bewilderment. I buried my forehead into my open palms as I let out a heavy sigh, bringing my fingers through my jet black hair as I explained, “Vic, I don’t know who else to ask. I don’t know who else to explain this to. You know me better than anyone and I trust you more than I trust myself. So, listen: Don’t panic. Don’t worry. Don’t fret. Stay cool. You may or may not have to kill me. If you do, it’s only because I couldn’t go through with killing myself. We straight?”

He stared at me for a moment more, all wide eyed like a deer in the headlights, before throwing his hands into the air and shaking his head from side to side, jaw hanging open and eyelids blinking rapdly. He said, “No offense, Sean, but you’re fucking crazy.”

With that oh-so-cocky grin, I replied, “I know that. Why the hell do you think I’m asking you to do this for me?”

I hadn’t seen Victor Crowley in at least a decade, so it was no surprise that he was caught off guard when he came home from his day job only to find me plowing his roommate on their living room futon, her moans echoing over throughout the apartment complex. In the ten plus years that I hadn’t seen Victor, he’d fought in a war and I’d become a professional wrestler. Funny what a little time can do to two people, isn’t it?

Nothing ever changed about Victor Crowley, and that was a bit of a comfort. He was exactly how I remembered him from when I first met him. Even after watching war buddies die face down in the mud, he had that same good ol’ boy, Southern drawl, perfected after a few years working on his grandfather‘s farm. Even after two divorces and three kids, he still wore those nut hugger jeans, stained with automotive oil and dried up snot. Even after moving to New York City to live in some shithole apartment, far the fuck away from our hometown of Manchester, Tennessee, he still smelled like he was drowned in a vat of cow shit and too much cheap cologne. God bless familiarity, for what it’s worth.

Behind a veil of cigarette smoke, I spoke straightforward and to the point, my words coming out as fast as bullets, “Listen to me, Vic. You know me. I’m not fucking around here. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a danger to everyone around me. You remember Judith? She’s dead because of me. You know my oh-so-loving parents? Them too. There was this guy who was following me around, telling me that he could make me a demigod by going back in time. I’m pretty sure I shot him, to be blunt, but I don’t quite remember because I blacked out. I’m not sure what’s going on anymore, Vic. I can’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. If I told you how many drugs I’m taking these days just to calm myself down, you’d be asking why I hadn’t already bought a casket to bury myself in. Flat out and simple, man: My entire life is up the fucking creek without a paddle. I’m not sure what I’m liable to do next. That’s why I’m telling you right now, right now, right here…

…if it seems like I’m getting even worse off? Or if I ask you to?” I paused, taking a long draw off my cigarette before dropping it down into the ashtray graveyard of dead cigarette buttes. “Shoot me. Shoot me right in the fucking head. Do not fucking hesitate. Do not fucking second guess yourself. Just do it, get over with, bury my body in the middle of nowhere and don’t bother to put up a goddamn tombstone. Okay? Can you do that for me, Vic? Are we clear here?”

“…you’re serious, aren‘t you?”

“Do I look like I’m joking? Now, one more time. Can you fucking do that for me, Vic?”

“…yeah, Sean. Yeah, I can do that for you.”

Suicide is a hell of a lot easier when you have someone else do it for you.

TWO. Cheap Sex and Unforeseen Consequences.

Victor’s roommate’s name was Marilyn Monroe Marie. Part-time florist, part-time whore, all around crazy bitch. She had more fucked up issues than God has angels. When I met her, the first words out of her mouth were, “If you’ll fuck me, I won’t call the cops.” This was after I had broken into her and Victor’s apartment by climbing up a fire escape and through an open window.

Needless to say, I complied with her demands.

Outside, a cold wind whipped through the morning. A baby blue sky hung overhead, hidden behind a thin overcast. New York City is the most narcissistic place in the world. It’s in love with itself and itself alone. The rest of the world can rot. The streets are filled with egomaniacal twats, obsessed with themselves. That’s probably why I fit in so well. I’m the exact same way.

In between gasps and moans, Marilyn would whisper her own special brand of sweet nothings in my ear. She would say things like, “You’re the best fuck I’ve had since that taxi driver with the dreads.” She’d mutter out things like, “I would let you do me in the ass, but I just met you.” She’d tell me, “You’re the third famous guy I’ve done this with. You should know, you’re better than Bono.”

Sex is interesting in the fact it’s the driving force behind everything we do. Your job, your belongings, the people you know. All of these things revolve around the craving for sex. Funny thing is, even though we put sex on such a high pedestal, it’s completely unimportant. In fact, physically speaking, taking a shit is more important than sex. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass. Give him a couple weeks without bowel movement and he’ll be dead.

That’s why, when you meet a girl like Marilyn, you milk it for all it’s worth. To girls like these, sex is just a way to pass the time. Use them and throw them away. Worthless fodder, for your dick’s pleasure.

Of course, this is all fine and dandy until the girl calls you two weeks later to tell you that the nut you busted got her pregnant.

For fuck’s sake. Enough already.

THREE. A Staggering Revelation.

The phone rang in the wee hours of the morning, just as Victor and I stepped into the hotel room, both of us buried underneath the influence of numerous terrible narcotics that were busy scraping at our brains and picking apart the pieces. I remember now, as she spoke, my confusion and bewilderment as I gasped out, feeling like I could start foaming from the mouth at any second.

Screaming, shouting, coughing in a drunken orgy of disbelief, I said, “…you’re what?!” It had been two weeks arrived here. Two weeks was all it took for everything to go wrong all over again. Two weeks and the proverbial shit hit the fan.

The silence was deafening on the other end of the phone. Marilyn’s voice came out as a meek and timorous shell of how I knew her. Whispery and in fragments, scared to death and put together in between panicky little sobs.

Victor was in the bathroom, kneeling at the toilet and vomiting up his mortal remains. We were somewhere on the outskirts of New York City; some half-assed, suburban, shithole with a interstate running through the middle of it all. This was where I was staying until FUSE on ESPN was over.

The sun was just beginning to rise up over the horizon, setting everything on fire with a deep orange glow. Just up the road, the cogs in the machinery of motion were beginning to turn in the so-called Big Apple. Businessmen following that oh-so-familiar routine. Junkies dragging themselves through the negro streets, hissing at the sunlight blinding their bloodshot eyes. The traffic a loud congregation of noise, frantic and in distress, a euphoria of confusion and complication. While the rest of the world turned, my world stopped moving. Dead silence. Stopped motion. Paused until I could return my seat to it’s full, upright position.

I could hear how fragile her voice sounded over the phone. How weak and powerless she must have felt as she sobbingly confessed, “You’re the only guy I’ve been with for a while now.” She said, “This whole whore thing is just a tough front I put on.” She said, “I’m scared, Sean. I’m scared.”

As she ranted and raved, I sat and I listened and I didn’t dare say a word.

“Sean,” She said, her voice as mangled as a broken accordion. “I’m not ready to be a mother.”

Not a fucking word…

FOUR. Venus in Furs

Lou Reed said it best: “I am tired. I am weary. I could sleep for a thousand years.”

Call it coincidence. Call it fate. Call it bad luck. I call it karma getting the best of me.

After years and years and years of living for myself and nobody else, it was all coming to one giant cataclysm. Karma was finally coming to collect it’s payment for every sin I’ve ever committed. Every time I got out of one bad situation, another one took it’s place.

Marilyn’s words were like a bullet to the brain. Two words was it all took for me to feel like my entire life was caving in all over again. Two words was all it took.

“I’m pregnant.” That was all it took, and it was like history repeating itself.

Memories of Judith filled my thoughts. That night, her ghost haunted every dream. I couldn’t sleep. It felt like I could barely breathe. It felt like I was suffocating beneath the heavy weight of this sudden stress. My head felt like a warehouse that had no room to spare. Everything was hazy, blurred, skewed, broken.

For the second time in the course of a year, I was going to be a father. Once again, I felt that same peculiar weight on my shoulders, like something was expected of me. My head raced with thoughts of what to do now.

It was like having those little cartoon consciences on your shoulders. One telling me to run far, far away and don’t look back. The other telling me to stay, to comfort this woman that I barely even knew, to find solace in our combined fear.

As all these thoughts spun in my head, I laid on the hotel mattress, my eyes wide as sunlight peeked in through the curtains, cascading me with blades of light.

And right about then, I heard the door bust open…

I am tired. I am weary. I could sleep for a thousand years.

FIVE. Judas Iscariot.

There was the sound of splintering wood and Victor’s voice saying, “I’m sorry, Sean! I’m so sorry!”

Chaos spilled into the hotel room, loud voices shouting out commands, guns waving in the air and threatening to shoot if I moved.

Wide eyed and half naked, I sat up in my bed and watched it all happen in slow motion. As the door splintered open, three burly men dressed in black broke through the threshold, voices like sandpaper as they grabbed a hold of my arms and dragged me out from under my covers. Two of them held my arms behind my back as the biggest man cracked his knuckles and balled his hands into heavy fists.

The first punch was in the gut, knocking the air out of me as I doubled over, gasping for breath as saliva dribbled down from my lower lip.

As I muttered a half-assed ‘fuck you’, they all giggled like schoolgirls, the big man rearing his arm back for another swing.

The second punch wasn’t as kind. It struck me right in the jaw, sending my head flying sideways. My lip busted open, my vision going blurry, but even through my hazy eyes, I could see Victor standing in the doorway, his head hung low and a look of absolute guilt on his face. A modern day Judas Iscariot.

If I could have spoken in anything other than vowels, I would have said, “Et tu, Victor?”

As they straightened my head back up, the big man looking down at me with a Cheshire grin, his face rough and wrinkled, polluted with ancient scars and blemishes, he said, “Sterling, all the Hail Maries in the world couldn’t save you now.”

With another punch to the face, everything went dark.

When it rains, it rains hard…

SIX. A Guy Like Me.

When you’re a guy like me, your past is riddled with a thousand troubles, some minor and some major.

You forgot most of them. Push them to the back of your head and don’t think about them until they pop up when you least expect them to, to fuck you over at the most inopportune moment.

When you’re a guy like me, you get involved with the wrong people. You tend to walk on the wrong side of the tracks, always. You’re a magnet for bad things. The depraved, immortal, nefarious things that most God fearing Americans try to keep away from. When you’re a guy like me, you’re living life to the fullest, without worrying about answering to anybody.

Problem is, some of this depraved, immoral, nefarious things can and will come back to bite you in the ass. When that happens, well, living life to the fullest starts to look a lot like living life like a fool. You find yourself in a dangerous situation that could have been avoided, if you’d only known how to play your cards right.

Needless to say, I didn’t.

SEVEN. One Hell of a Goddamn Unsatisfactory Situation.

With the splash of cold water, I opened my eyes to be blinded by a light shining directly in my face. I tried to move, but my wrists were bound behind me, my back pressed up tight against a chair. My mouth tasted like blood, my face feeling sore and bruised. People stood all around me, their faces shrouded in darkness, all of them holding me in cool disregard as I looked around, wide eyed and beginning to panic.

Everything was quiet. Everything was still. You could hear a pin drop.

Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. Nothing happened. It was like everything was frozen in time, except for me. Then, out of the darkness, breaking through the silence, I heard footsteps approaching. The smell of cigar smoke and cheap cologne burned my nostrils. A voice like sandpaper, gritty and weathered by age, distinctly New Yorkian, echoed through the room. It spoke, without any hesitation, “You have no fucking idea how long I’ve been waiting for this moment, Sterling. No fucking idea.”

When I realized who that voice belonged to, that’s when I knew I was in over my head.

He went by several names, various aliases and sobriquets that he had collected over the years. His assumed real name was Devon Dole. Most his friends referred to him as Double D or Deedee. His employees, such as the brutes that pulled me out of my hotel room just a few hours earlier, they called him Mr. Dole. His enemies, well, they called him Devon Death on account of how many people died by his hands.

Right about then, I happened to be one of his enemies.

This short little man, smoking on his cigar, his jet black hair combed over to hide his bald spot, he was a mass murderer. If you had ever shaken his hand, you’d shook hands with a man as cruel as the devil himself. He built an empire on fear, on control, on power. He made his money by robbery, drug trafficking, prostitution, you name it. A true entrepreneur of all things illegal. He was the Donald Trump of America’s seedy underbelly.

And right then? He was standing right in front of me, a gun in one hand and brass knuckles in the other.

Right then, I could only speak in vowels. All my words came out jumbled and confused. Every bone in my body quaked in fear, my skin rising with goosebumps, my swollen lower lip trembling as I stared up at him, wide eyed and gaping.

When you’re a guy like me, your past in your worst enemy.

I guess karma comes around for everybody…

EIGHT. A History Lesson.

Allow me to explain.

My name in Sean Sterling. In my life, I’ve done some terrible things. I’ve lived in reckless abandon, disregarding the safety and feelings of all those around me. I’m a graceless degenerate who has lived for no one but himself. In all likelihood, I’m nothing more than a vile, festering, piece of shit who the world would be better off without.

This is who I am. This is who I’ll always be, until death comes and takes me away.

I first met Devon Dole in New York City, on my nineteenth birthday, a little more than eight years ago. It had been six months since I left my home in Manchester, Tennessee, equipped with nothing but a car, a suitcase, and the need to escape my backwoods town once and for all.

I was down on my luck. My life had become a drunken cataclysm of meaningless endeavors and empty attempts at getting on my feet. I lived in alleyways, eating out of dumpsters, stumbling through the poor parts of town begging for change to buy alcohol, drugs, or one night in a cheap hotel room. It was the best of times, it was worst of times. I was free from my roots, but at the same time, I was dying on the streets.

On the night that I met him, it was raining cats and dogs. I was huddled underneath a cardboard tent, trying to sleep against the cold brick in some back alley in Harlem, shivering cold and wet beneath the stillborn moon. It all happened like a Hollywood gangster film. A door flew open and the next thing I saw, this short little man with a cigar hanging out of his mouth was throwing some skeevy Italian type out into the alley, ranting and raving with language not suitable for a sailor.

I peeked out from behind my cardboard home, watching perplexed at this short little man slammed his fist into the Italian’s face over and over. From inside the room where they came from, I could hear laughter and people screaming for blood.

When you live in the bad part of town for long enough, you’re sure to see a fight or two break out, but usually, it’s not as vicious as what I witnessed that night. This little man, he was turning this guy’s face into a bloody pulp. You could hear the skin flattening and bruising beneath his fists. Blood splattered and flew through the air.

And then, at this Italian guy leaned back against the brick wall, dazed with his mouth hanging open and his eyes swollen shut, his face red with blood, this little man with his cigar hanging from between his lips grinned wide, pulling a small handgun from his jacket. Three shots. Three shots and I had just seen a murder. Three shots and suddenly a corpse was laying only a few feet from me. Three shots and now this little man was laughing like a maniac, wiping the blood off his hands and onto a handkerchief.

He noticed me out of the corner of his eyes and grinned even wider, saying in a voice thick with sarcasm, “What’s the matter, kid? You never witnessed a murder before?”

He walked over to me, that gun still shining in his hand. I must have been gaping, because he was still cracking up. He knelt down in front of me, tilting his head to the side slightly, breathing cigar smoke into my face as he said, “Do you know who I am?”

All I could do was shake my head ‘no’.

He stifled a laugh, placing a hand on my shoulder, raising both eyebrows as he explained, “I’m Devon Dole. Today? Is my birthday. Right now? I’m having a party inside, in case you couldn’t hear. That guy laying over there dead? He said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Now, I want to make sure of something… I can trust you not to run and squeal to the cops about what you just saw, can’t I?”

I nodded my head, gulping.

“Good boy. If I find out you told anybody, you realize I’ll hunt you down and kill you just like I killed him, right?”

I nodded my head, quivering.

“Good boy. It would appear we’re on the same page here.”

He stood up slowly, looking down at me as he rubbed his cigar out on the brick wall. Pausing, that crooked grin spreading wide across his face, he said, “You know what? I like you, kid. If you’re ever interested in, doing some odd jobs for me, here’s my card.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a call card, his name and his address written across it in cursive. Handing it down to me, he had a devil’s grin across his face as he said, “It pays good and I can promise you’ll have a whole new level of respect through the city. Understand?“

And again, I nodded my head.

“Good boy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a party to attend.”

And with that, he disappeared back into the door as if nothing ever happened, leaving me out in the rain soaked streets, underneath my cardboard box, looking down at the card he had handed to me.

The next morning, I went to the address and began working for Devon Dole, New York City‘s most prolific crime lord…

NINE. The Devil in the Details.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Sean. You know why you’re here, don’t you?”

He paced back and forth as he spoke, always watching me out of the corners of his beady little eyes. That grin never left his face, foreshadowing some terrible fate in my future. Grinning and shaking his head, puff-puff-puffing away at his fat Cuban cigar, that gun shining all silvery in one hand, those brass knuckles shining in the other.

“Some time ago, Sean, I loaned you a hefty sum of money, did I or did I not?” The ghosts of my past were coming back to haunt me, all at once. “With this money, you told me that you were planning on leaving New York City once and for all to pursue greater ventures in life. Wasn’t that what you said? Greater ventures in life, right?”

His grin went crooked, his head turning to look at me full on for a moment, before looking away. This was all intimidation, but this intimidation was sure to lead to more extreme measures in due time. “Now, even though your leaving would mean I’d be losing on of my best employees, I granted you this wish, out of the kindness of my heart. I gave you the money to leave here and go wherever you want. I only gave you two rules to abide by. Do you remember what those rules were, Sean?”

He paused, turning to face me completely as he kneeled down, his face only inches from mine.

“One. I expect to be paid back within the next year. If not, the price would be your head. Two. Once you leave New York City, you best never come back without my permission. Those rules ring a bell, Sean?”

My bones quaked. My head hurt. My blood boiled.

“Now, seeing as I never got my money back and seeing as you’re sitting here, right now, in New York City, without even giving me so much as a call, you can only begin to imagine my surprise and elation when a certain Mr. Victor Crowley came by my humble abode earlier to inform me that you were nearby. Needless to say, I paid Victor with a lifetime guarantee of protection and enough money to live the good life for a little while. But let’s not worry about Victor, Sean… Let’s worry about you.”

One of Dole’s cronies supplied him with a chair from the shadows and next thing I knew, he was sitting across from me with that gun in his lap, his eyes peering into mine as though he was ready to rip my throat out. There was a certain sort of intensity to his stare that sent chills down my spine. I have never been a man to fear death, but right then, I was so terrified I was trembling, unable to catch my breath, feeling as though I could pass out at any given moment.

As he stared at me, his voice came out with no hesitation and not even the slightest hint that he was joking. He told me, “I’ve been debating for the past few hours on how to handle you, Sean. I’ve been trying to decide how to put an end to your precious little life. Now, it’s a fact that I could squash you like a fly with the snap of my fingers, but it’s a really a matter of how I should go about doing this. I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to make an example out of you, just to show anymore would-be fuck-ups how insignificant another human being’s life really is to me. So, I’ve thought and I’ve thought and I’ve thought, Sean.”

He leaned in toward me, a certain sort of unexplainable evil spread across his face. “Something quick, like a bullet to the brain? You know what a Colombian necktie is, don’t you? Would that suit your fancy? I guess I could slowly dismember you over the course of a few days? You know, it wouldn’t be too hard for me to make a few calls, get a big vat of acid, and drowned you in it. Sound good? I have so many ideas in my head, Sean, it’s just a matter of which I want to go with…”

He paused. I still couldn’t find my voice to speak. Even if I did, it would have been pointless. Nothing could stop what had been set into motion. “…but, y’know, come to think of it, I seem to remember Victor mentioning something about you getting his roommate pregnant. Maybe I could send some cronies to beat her up, rape her, bring her back here, and slowly torture her to death while you watch. Then afterwards, we could bury you alive with her. How about that, Sean?”

He rose his eyebrows high on his forehead, taking a long drag from his cigar as he shook his head back and forth, lowering his head as he did. When he raised it back up, his face deadpan. “Now, Sean, all of these possible outcomes face you right now. Every single one of them could be the cause of your inevitable death. However, because I am, above all things, a fair man and because, at one time, you were one of my most trusted employees, I’m going to toss you a bone and give you a chance to make up for your mistakes. Does that sound good to you?”

And what could I do? I nodded my head like mad. It was like déjà vu. Old buried memories of that night in the alley, when I first met Devon Dole, flooded my head.

“In exchange for your life, which is most definitely in my hands right about now, you’ll be working for me again, Sean. Employee isn’t quite the right word, because I won’t be paying you a goddamn cent. You’ll be doing what I want when I want you to do it, with no questions and no complaints. You’ll do this for as long as I tell you to do this. It could be a couple weeks, it could be for a couple of years. But just to make things crystal clear… if you fuck up again or if you even think about trying to do a disappearing act, I promise you I will hunt you down to the ends of this earth and make positively sure you suffer. Are we clear, Sean?”

A nod. A nod was all it took for my fate to be sealed. He grinned wide, a grin that belonged to the devil himself. If he was indeed the devil, then I was his new Antichrist. Standing up form his stool and staring down at me, with his eyes holding my life in cruel disregard, he stifled laughter beneath his breath, saying in a voice as cold and lifeless as the depths of space, “Good boy. Now listen and listen good. This is the only second chance you’ll ever get from me. Ever. You’re going to be a given a cell phone, Sean. This cell phone is for nothing but business, period. When that phone rings, no matter how far away from New York City you are, you best be ready to do some work for me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more important business to attend to. Good night and good luck with those… oh-so-great ventures in life, as you so eloquently put it not too long ago. Now, get him the fuck out of here, boys.”

As Devon Dole turned and disappeared into the darkness, as calm and cool as he had come in, the shadows surrounding me moved in close and untied me. The next thing I knew, they had me by the arms and were leading me through dimly lit corridors. With one more punch to the jaw for good measure, they threw me out of a door and onto the rain soaked streets of New York City.

As I laid there on the sidewalk, breathing heavy and watching the blood from my busted lip float away in a little stream, I thought to myself, “What a world, what a life, what a way to live…”

So it goes. Hail to the thief, death to the king.